lovehatethings

How podcasts have taken over my car stereo, and why I'm strangely excited about it.

While I've been blogging, in one form or another, for a few years now, my serious efforts at trying to maintain a site based largely on blog entries has really only been going in earnest for about six months. In that time, in addition to writing, discovering, encapsulating and reporting on things from significant to pop culture minutae, I've also been taking a critical look at other blogs and trying to uncover the archetypes and patterns which make them up.

I would never try to assert myself as some sort of grand vizier of blogging, but I do have a background in arts and media studies, and the patterns I am familiar with from traditional media aren't too foreign when trying to overlay them on new media. One of the claims I'm quite comfortable making after dabbling in the medium for this time is that blogging is web graffiti.

In the same way that most of us look around our cities and shirk and scowl when we see a building or statue defaced, I often feel the same way when trolling from blog to blog looking for content. Graffiti suffers the fate of being incredibly easy to do, but incredibly difficult to do well. Anyone can pick up an aerosol wand and wisp their grey matter onto concrete, but how many instances of such unburdened creativity do we find of any use or interest?

For every hundred or so pieces of bloated misshapen letter on boxcars, storage units or overpasses, there is the rare instance that captures our eye. Whether its style or message, graffiti as an art form is only complained about because the process of experimentation, which takes place in private with other art forms, is obscenely public in its most nascent and phrenetic stages. Where a sculptor may shape and reshape a dozen time with the same piece of clay, the graffiti artist pepper the community with every failed incarnation of a vision that often becomes, itself, a long-standing indicator of failure or incompetence.

Quite simply, blogs are a medium rarely well-done.

Blogging has become the lowest common denominator of the collective thoughts of New Media. Anyone can contribute, and they do. There is insufferable dreck to be mined through before reaching even a nugget of gold, but the mines are endless and the intent is telling. 

And while I loathe the concept of "lifecasting" (at least in a dedicated form) and deride (yet am often engrossed in) the parasitic viscious cycle of tech blogging, the single subject blog (no matter if the subject is person, place or thing) has become sterile to my wandering eye. I can certainly give ten seconds of my time to peruse the "blog" entries on Gizmodo, Engadget, TechCrunch, CNET or Lifehacker every day or two and often find a link that's worth clicking, but such sites are essentially webmags. The jewels come from the chaotic style that is wrought from personal insights and bridging gaps between things that seem inconsequential.

I firmly believe the growing popularity of Twitter and like microblogging services is largely due, not to the improved quality of ideas on the part of the users, but, instead, the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff in an economic manner. Instead of sifting through twelve pages to find interest, now I can flash twelve tweets on one screen and complete the task in mere seconds. But this strength of microblogging is also it greatest weakness in terms of providing entertainment value.

The appeal of a socially-poignant piece of graffiti lies in the message behind the art. There is little art to microblogging - sure it takes a certain amount of skill to craft a cogent message in 140 characters, but essentially it's caption writing. In most cases, I would never ascribe an artistic sense to blogging, there is most definitely a style that accompanies the content.

I love words. I love using words to manufacture meaning. While I can find some relief in a well-crafted "report" on an event or a product, it's the writer that breaches parameters that I seek and try to become. Lifecasting is best realized not through the physical report but the mental. Try Mindcasting. On a day to day basis I am impacted by countless things that I can draw together and present in a unique fashion. I want to enjoy the ride of expressing these connections. I hope that others enjoy the ride of reading some of them, but the mindcast exists for its own sake: thought, creativity, expression - what makes an alluring piece of graffiti, makes an engaging blog.

I don't know how to couch this in clever or witty banter. I don't know how to ask for your forgiveness in unleashing this on you. That I know something like this exists makes my world a bit less innocent.

And so I present... The Incredible, Edible Anus!

"The chocolates are small anuses, no "cheeks" or other body parts attached. The seem to only come in chocolate or solid silver. They are certainly a curiosity and would be a great gag gift for your less than conservative friends or even gifts for a wild bachelor or bachelorette party. Just remember they are chocolate so be sure to keep them in a cool dry place."

As the associatedcontent.com article states upon heading to chocolate anus site:

"it is easy to forget you are at a website that sells chocolate anuses."

A thousand pardons my blogging brothers and sisters. I feel shamed and guilty and not worthy of sharing the same web as you, but the site is called lovehatethings.

Forget about a Food and Drug Administration or Health and Welfare, Russia's got a serious idea in creating a state Alcohol Agency being dubbed the Ministry of Vodka by citizens. While some people may consider this silly or just plain depressing, I, for one, salute the AA for its work in promoting Russian alcohol domestically and around the world.

"The head of the new state alcohol agency -- gleefully dubbed the Ministry for Vodka by the press -- is advocating cutting taxes on vodka to make the country's national tipple more accessible, the Izvestia daily reported."

Perhaps overshadowed by state groups responsible for the military or borscht, this move shows that the Russian government is willing to commit all necessary resources to a vital industry. I wish that Canada would create ministries devoted to donuts, hockey and beer. I wish the US would create departments devoted to mom's apple pie, baseball and advertising. You can never legislate too much of a good thing.

"Igor Chuiyan, the former head of state alcohol monopoly Rosspirtprom, has been appointed head of the new federal agency for alcohol market regulation, or Rosalkogol for short."

I wish Parker Brothers sold Alcohol Monopoly in North America. I could buy a $2 bottle of ripple on Baltic Avenue and $400 bottle of scotch on Broadway.

They say that you can find art everywhere. Apparently, since no one has told who "they" are and I'm not "you", I cannot confirm or deny the efficacy of such a statement. Here is, however, a convincing example that those who do not wash their cars are simply reaching out to the art community at large.

I suppose, by logical extension, all of you who wash your car must hate art. You self-righteous carwashing bastards, give the struggling artist a chance.

I pose the aesthetic quandry to you all: is this man's art about dirt, or the absence of dirt? You carwashers had better believe the absence of dirt, because, by this logic, your effort in washing can simply be claimed to be Malevich-inspired suprematism.

Asking... Why no Web 2.1? How tasty are frogs? What's in an egg? And why does the CRTC piss me off so much?

Link to Episode Eighteen: Full Throttle

Show Notes

full dysclosure
Not so fast! Canadian ISPs Slow Down P2P Traffic
On The Record: Judge says downloads don’t equal lost sales
Holy Lupins!  Monty Python DVD sales skyrocket thanks to offering free content

movies
In The Not-Another-Awards-Ceremony Category:  Our Oscar Picks

tech
Gee, Another Hard Drive?

wheel of pop
Television: Canadian Game Shows 

websites of the week
Mike: evernote.com
Anth: saveournet.ca

guest dyscussion
Lana Gay from CBC Radio 3

musical selection
Gentleman Reg (as chosen by Lana Gay)

While I know the litigious-minded proliferation of the western world with regards to out-of-court settlements with big corporations, the fear-mongering has become absurdly ridiculous when on a carton of eggs that contains pictures of eggs and a rendering of a chicken, the company has to list the allergy advice: CONTAINS EGG.

Have we been absorbed so far as consumers into the Sham-Wow death grip that in the future we will need our peanut butter to warn us of peanuts, our orange juice to warn us of oranges and our cucumbers to carry a label that says "contains cucumber"?

I also like the claim of "free range" eggs. It's good to think these eggs were allowed to graze openly on the lush plains well before they were packed. I know that PETA has been advocating for eggs to have a minimum of two weeks on the range before they are packed and subsequently boiled alive and dipped in dye for Easter festivities.

Considering the 7-11 1.8L Double Gulp fountain drink: a fountain pop option that shouldn't rationally exist, yet provides a sense of accomplishment.